Amy Casey Takes Her Tiny Cities to New Heights

Amy Casey is known for her paintings of miniature towns with teeny suburban houses and buildings, many of which are modeled after the ones she comes across in her adopted hometown of Cleveland. Rendered in incredible detail, her tiny structures are stacked like building blocks and teeter on stilts at anxiety-inducing heights. Connecting these delicate communities are maddening networks of highways and cables, and while people are visibly absent from the picture, there is no doubt that these microcosms are brimming with life and nervous energy. We featured her work in Hi-Fructose Vol. 5 and on the blog here and here.

Casey recently exhibited new work in two solo exhibitions, “Formations” at Defiance College in Ohio, and “Expansion: New Paintings” at the Zg Gallery in Chicago. In a statement, Casey described the inspiration behind her work: “Using elements of the places I spend time in as sort of building blocks, I’ve been building and rebuilding my own cityscapes. Some driving forces of these paintings include ideas of adaptation, growth, balance and the slow accumulation of parts to create a greater whole. While working, my thoughts often touch on communities and constructed environments: the mix of nature and artifice; how we as a community are held together or fall apart, and all of our vulnerabilities. I am curious about the resilience of life and our ability to keep going in the face of ever shifting circumstances.”

Casey was born in 1976 in Eerie, Pennsylvania and received her BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art. Learn more about her artistic process and how her work has evolved over time in this short documentary by Ted Sikora: